It’s another Sunday afternoon on Kauai, preceded by a perfect ride on my motorcycle. It always manages to be the time when I am most likely going to start writing about something. There are moments on the bike when I feel completely free, navigating with a perfect rhythm. My mind becomes untethered and roams aimlessly between my ears. It has often been a great catalyst, getting me going on something I hadn’t thought about before or infusing an old idea with some muscle.
An idea will take hold and it slowly becomes a growing mental weed, which eventually gets me to sit down like now. I know it is easy to think that my sloppy habits are signs of stream of unconsciousness, but I swear I think about this stuff before finally sitting down, turning up Pandora, gently staring at the screen and imagining hundreds of words flawlessly assembled.
I have wanted to write about being older than more and more people as time goes by, but an AARP styled story has had zero attraction. I want to talk to people that are younger than myself.
The visual that immediately came to mind are the circles that grow in the trunk of most any tree. They mark the years, often providing clues within those rings, the ladders of time. I now have more rings than most of the two-legged members of the human forest. I got to this place because the markers of time began building on each other, providing an increasing girth to the range of my experiences. I have also been lucky and fortunate and now find myself humbled to be standing tall in our forest, a great vantage point. I see and sense a lot more from up here, although I would never call it wisdom, which feels too vain for my liking.
This episode was prompted by a phone call I had with my grandson, Shane, a handful of weeks ago, then allowing it percolate over several rides. We talked for nearly three minutes, a world record length for this eight year old boy. One of the things we talked about was how his diet has changed as he has gotten older. He told me about being aware of this and articulated it really well. Now, when the family is all together at dinner time, he eats whatever his gourmet-cooking mother prepares. I told him that even Grandpa Larry is still changing, while he was just beginning.
Change and awareness are the bananas for this particular version of today’s Monkey Mind, adding another branch to the old trunk, while tweaking the latest ring which is still carving its way around, before it locks in its circular history.
This particular tree that is me is hopefully good for another ten years. Counting the rings, like pages off a calendar, can precipitate stunning realizations, especially if awareness is one of your hobbies. Just like any key markers in our lives, time must be experienced and can’t be imagined. I have traveled a fair distance and I am definitely showing some ring. I have never thought forward too much because my imagination wasn’t great with the hypothetical.
I like where my mind has taken me after all this time. I like the idea that a brief conversation with my grandson could get me thinking about my life, the constancy of change and the ever present passage of time. I have likely been the age of anyone reading this, while everything I write, I write for Shane, who has so many years and changes to live through until his tree stands tall, right next to where mine lived. We all have so much to learn, so many changes to experience, for as long as we are here.